Boston Wilson appears in the High Court at Auckland charged with the murder of 10-month-old Chance Kamanaka O Ke Akura Aipolani-Nielson (inset) in Birkdale in 2021. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Steve Braunias sat through the second week of the trial of a man accused of murdering a 10-month-old baby.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
There is an empty chair in the middle of the back row of the jury in courtroom 13, upstairs in the High Court at Auckland, in the trial of a man accused of murdering a baby. It’s a vacant lot which operates as a silent, constant reminder of anguish at the death of Chance Aipolani-Nielson, aged 10 months.
One of the jurors was excused from duty on Monday after being reduced to tears. Next week, the remaining 11 will be tasked with determining the verdict for Boston Liam Wilson, 23, who has only ever been described in the trial by people who know him as decent, gentle, protective.
“One of the most severe brain injuries I’ve ever seen,” said a paediatric radiologist. Another medical expert called by the prosecution, a Scottish neuropathologist appearing on video link from his home in Edinburgh, was asked whether something had happened to Chance to cause a cardiovascular collapse. Yes, he said. What was that, he was asked. “The skull fracture”, he said, speaking in a broad Scottish accent, “tells us that the head has clearly bashed against something.”
Police arrested and charged Wilson with murder. He is pleading not guilty. There are undisputed facts. The baby was home alone with his uncle at a house in Birkdale on Auckland’s North Shore on December 15, 2021. Chance suffered blunt force trauma to his head. He died two days later at Auckland’s Starship hospital. Scans of his fractured skull showed a 3cm depression. Other imaging showed a massively swollen brain.
The when and where it happened is also undisputed but the most crucial issue — what actually happened, and how it actually happened — has occupied the central argument in courtroom 13.
There have been references to Chance having been “thrown”; other times they said he was “struck”.
On Wednesday morning, in this second week of the trial, the defence gave a kind of preview of what they claimed happened, when Wilson’s lawyer, Phil Hamlin, put three scenarios to the Scottish neuropathologist, Professor Colin Smith, sitting in a room at his house in Edinburgh at close to midnight his time.
“I’m going to outline three events to you,” Hamlin said to Smith. The professor listened as Hamlin outlined the first scenario of the defendant accidentally dropping the baby, who hit his head on a table as he fell.
Hamlin: “Is that likely to cause damage to the child?”
Smith: “There’s a potential that could cause a skull fracture.”
The second scenario was that after the baby hit his head, and was not responding, the defendant held him under his armpits and shook him for 5-10 seconds in a desperate attempt to revive him.
Hamlin: “Could a severe shaking cause the pattern of pathology?”
Smith: “There are cases of shaking a baby to death. Yes.”
The third scenario was that after the baby hit his head, and the defendant shook him for 5-10 seconds, he left the room in a panic and accidentally struck the baby’s head against a doorframe.
Hamlin: “Is that striking a possible cause of any form of fracture or brain damage?”
Smith: “In my opinion, it’s much less likely than falling against the edge of a table.”
The professor was the Crown’s final witness. The AV link was ceased, and the defence called Boston Wilson, 23, to the stand. He approached it in tears. There were dark shadows under his eyes, he hunched over in the stand, bowed his head. He has four children, the eldest only 6; their mother, his partner Darien Aipolani-Williams, sat in the public gallery, weeping, her eyes fixed on the father of their four little girls.
“I cared for Chance like he was my own son,” he said, and wept once more. And then he described what he claimed happened at 66 Vandeleur Ave in Birkdale on December 15, 2021, how he picked up the baby but there had been an accidental fall and Chance hit his head (“It made a ‘donk’ sound”), and then he panicked and shook the baby to revive him (“It didn’t work”), and after that there was another accidental striking of Chance’s head on the doorframe (“It was a hard hit”).
When the trial began, his lawyer Lorraine Smith told the jury, “Everything that happened was an accident.” The scenarios put to Professor Smith, and then the evidence given by Boston Wilson, were the first time the court has heard the sequence of these accidents, the series of these accidents, the pattern - dropping the baby and his head hitting the table, rushing out of the room with the baby and his head striking the doorframe - of these accidents.
Security officers at the High Court sometimes have to calm or separate families who appear at trials for violent crimes. Inside the courtroom, family members of the accused will typically sit as far away as possible as family members of the victim. Things can get heated as they leave the court and security will step in with a quiet word. But the family of Boston Wilson and the family of Chance Aipolani-Wilson are the same family. Something terrible has happened within that family, that close, loving, supportive whānau.
You hear a lot about their closeness at the trial. It’s one of the undisputed facts. How the aunts were there at a moment’s notice to help out. How every single day about 9am, Darien’s father, Rhys Williams, would pick her up for a coffee and a catch-up. And how Boston and Darien first met when they were 14 at Birkenhead College: they got together and stayed together, creating their own narrative of teenage parents who love their kids and raise a family.
Defence called a range of witnesses who praised Boston’s parenting, how involved he was with his own kids, how much he loved Chance. He has a word tattooed on his face: BLESSED. It’s an accurate summary of his life with Darien, his partner of nine years.
In 2021, they shared the house with Darien’s sister Azure Aipolani-Nielson, and her baby, Chance. Darien’s youngest daughter had only just been born — she was 6 weeks old that December — and her mother also lived in the house. An aunt lived on the same street.
On the morning of December 15, Darien and Boston decided to give the kids some early Christmas presents. Chance was given a two-piece camo outfit. Darien dressed him in it, and sent a couple of photos to his mum, her sister, Azure. Then Boston took his kids to his aunt’s house, and after Darien gave Chance a bottle and put him to bed, she met her father for a coffee. Boston settled down on the couch. He was playing Call of the Wild on PlayStation.
After he was arrested and charged, police sealed off the house for evidence.
Photos of the rooms were shown to the jury. A small white tinsel Christmas tree was in the lounge.
“It’s a hunting game,” he said of Call of the Wild. You hunt deer and bison with a range of rifles, handguns and bows.
There wasn’t a lot of money coming into the house. The couch seats were torn, and the TV was on top of an old set of drawers. Boston said he heard Chance cough. A neighbour was called to give evidence, and she said she heard a baby crying.
The house was very tidy, very clean. The dishes had been put away, the kitchen wiped down.
“Could have been another baby crying,” he said in cross-examination to Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock.
Darien had laid Chance down on Azure’s bed, surrounded by pillows shaped in a horseshoe to prevent him rolling off. The blinds were closed in the police photo.
“I heard him cough,” he said.
McClintock suggested he couldn’t have heard him above his PlayStation, but he disagreed. She suggested Chance was crying loudly, and reminded him of something he had said in a police interview. She repeated it, coming down with a hard full stop after every word: “Just. Wouldn’t. Stop. Crying.”
There was a little bedside table in the bedroom. It was covered with a baby’s blue duvet in the police photo.
He said to McClintock he didn’t recall saying that to police. She showed him the transcript. She also played the video of that interview, when he had said, and McClintock repeated it once more, “Just. Wouldn’t. Stop. Crying.” The courtroom watched it.
“You were visibly upset,” she said when it finished. “You were hanging your head. You were stressed, weren’t you?” He said he wasn’t stressed.
She took him through the first scenario, of Chance falling out of his arms and hitting his head on the bedside table. She said, “You didn’t want to admit that you lost control because he was crying, do you?” He denied it. Then she asked him about the shaking, and said, “You knew that could cause an injury.” He said he didn’t know that.
She said, “You’re an experienced dad. You know not to shake a baby.” He said he hadn’t been taught.
There was a photo of the bedroom door. There were family photos on one side, and the door was open in the photo.
Alysha McClintock said to him, “I suggest that after you had shaken Chance with extreme force, because he just. Wouldn’t. Stop. Crying, you threw him in the direction of the table, and he hit the table. That’s what happened, isn’t it.”
He said that wasn’t correct. She said, “It’s completely untrue, isn’t it, the accident, the shaking, another accident.” He said what he said was not untrue. She said, “You threw Chance against that table, and you shook him with extreme force knowing it might kill him. A baby. Your nephew. And you did it anyway, didn’t you?” He said no.
The possibilities of what happened that day in a house on the North Shore — yuccas and succulents by the front steps, one vase on a windowsill — were condensed as different versions on Friday when the Crown and the defence gave their closing addresses.
“In sheer rage, he either fired him to the ground and his head hit the table, or he was struck with something,” said prosecutor Alysha McClintock.
“What Boston Wilson had done is he completely and utterly lost control. He lost control of himself. He lost it with a baby.”
“He goes in. The baby just. Would. Not. Stop. Crying, and he shook the baby with significant force in a fit of rage. There is no universe you shake a baby like that.”
There was a box of tissues in front of the absent juror’s seat.
For the defence, Lorraine Smith said it simply didn’t add up, made no sense, that a man who had only ever disciplined his own children by calling for time out, and who wanted to adopt Chance as his own son, would beat and shake a baby to death because his crying got on his nerves and was interrupting the enjoyment of hunting a bison in Call of the Wild on PlayStation.
He heard the baby cough, she said. He went in and saw the baby white, lifeless, not breathing, she said. He picked him up and accidentally dropped him, she said. He shook him, she said. He ran for help and accidentally struck his head on the doorframe, she said.
“Every action he took that day was to try to save his life. The shaking was to save his life. He went in and saw the baby had gone white, and that was the triggering event. He did not want to cause harm, let alone death. But he shook the baby, and he went too far. He went too hard. He was too young, and he was under too much stress.”
Justice Gordon will sum up on Monday, and ask the 11 jurors to deliberate. Guilty, or not guilty; murder, or accident; intent to cause death, or an attempt to save life ... There are times when the name of the victim in a murder trial takes on a greater power than the name of the accused.
Either way next week’s verdict goes, this trial will be remembered for the death — too soon, too sorrowful — of Baby Chance.
Music, dance, and Christmas celebrations.